Lucky's Waterloo
by MrsRJLupin
Summary: Lance Corppral Thomas Wright aka Roberta Haycock, has made his way back from the Americas where he sought his treacherous father and make amends for his crimes. He falls in with an eager but destitute boy on his way to Frederickson. But the peace of 1815 does not last and he falls in with Sharpe and the odious William of Orange. Based on Bernard Cornwell's novels.
1. Kit

Twelve weeks after boarding a merchant navy ship bound for Williamsburg, South Carolina and Roberta landed back at Le Havre, where Richard Sharpe had seen her safely on his way back to his new life.  
The dock looked much the same as when she left: soldiers of various regiments milling about, trade being conducted, goods and passengers loaded and unloaded. She was much the same too.

Tom sat on the wall by the inn, from where coaches, local and long-haul, departed, and she wondered which she needed to get that would take her closest to Dortmund. She had money still, her own money, from the People of the Republic of France, a pistol and a short dirk. The army would not miss those. Especially if they had known her purpose.

South Carolina, that was where she had gone, to right a wrong, the wrong that had been burning inside her inside since her thoughts had crystallised into why she wanted to go, consuming her, making her restless with nervous energy. But it had been easy to find him.

Perhaps now it was done she would be able to find the captain.

The thought of seeing William Frederickson, late captain of the 60th rifles brigade and the man who had asked her to marry him warmed her mind, like the sun rising on summer's morning. She had thought of him often, and it had been her thoughts which had made her decide to go, go to the Americas, commit the act that she had done.

It had been wrong, she knew, having to decide between two trespasses on God's laws - and God's laws were incontrovertible.

Honour thy father and thy mother, the fourth was clear, unambiguous, the eighth equally so. Thou shalt not kill. But, had she not signed up to an organisation whose prime objective was killing? Had she been a Roman Catholic, Tom might have at least been able to consult a priest.

Catholics were lucky they had an interpreter, Tom had often thought; the liberty that Protestantism offered, to read the bible in your own language, to decide yourself what it meant was, in this case, a difficult and daunting prospect, and increasingly frought with misinterpretation through ignorance. Surely one day, Roberta thought, Protestantism could be the end of religion in Britain, for if enough people realised that if they didn't have to rely on ritual to fulfil their lives did they need to rely on anything else?

The rattle of wheels and the clatter of hooves brought Tom out of her thoughts, and the thoughts of her journey ahead sprang forth. She jumped down, the heavy winter wool coat she had bought in New York, where she had indeed received a letter from Matthew Harris. He had written, as he had promised he would. He had given up the navy and was now stable master in a country house in Hampshire, and tutor to the young son of the family.

It was keeping the best of the fresh spring weather from chilling her on that fresh evening, and she waited for the next coach to arrive, so she could work out how she would get to Westphalia. Would this one be one, that might go to Dortmund? Or somewhere near, that she could get a connection.

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In the office at the back of his law partnership buildings, William Frederickson put down the land registry title deeds that were the subject of a legal dispute between two wealthy families and leaned back in his curved chair.

The room was well furnished and he was indeed lucky to have been able to secure the premises on city's main street, Hochstrasse. Smart and comfortable, he was indeed making a pretty penny from the war widows and landholders keen on re-establishing their claim on land, however tenuously linked to them prior to 1793 and the subsequent wars.

It was somewhere that Roberta would be pleased to call home, he was sure, where they could establish a family and her time spent fighting in the British Army could be a distant anecdote for parties and gatherings.

It had been three months dince she had departed, three long months since her embrace to initiate earthquakes. Yet William Frederickson had heard nothing from her.

It was to be, he told himself, how it was to be. It was a foolish man that turned to drink over a woman, or a lost love.

Looking at the letter, the broken seal of the Hohenzollern Arms, symbol of the Prussian Army reflected in the candlelight Sweet William considered its instruction.

The Field Marshal was requesting all officers to be recalled to command and that he should report to Paderborn immediately.

Frederickson's eyes looked at the intertwined signature at the bottom. Von Blücher. His action at Grossgörschen was highly laudable, despite the losses, and he had punched a hole of tens of thousands of the Grand Armeé and, better, the Imperial Guard had been decimated.

Yes, pondered Frederickson, placing down the letter on top of the legal writs, subpoenas and land charges. Yes. Under a man such as Blücher, leading forwards with fire and ferocity, Frederickson felt that could acquiesce to the Prussian Royal House's request that he attend.

He lay the letter on the table then, from the drawer pulled out two sheets of writing paper. The second letter was for his partner, Schneider. The first, well...when she came, Roberta should know where he was.

When both had been written, Frederickson laid them both on the table, his good eye looking over his thin, sloping handwriting. God willing, the name on that letter would, in time, read "Roberta Frederickson."

With a swift intake of breath, the former - and future - captain crossed over to the walnut cabinet, opening the doors with care. The forest green of his uniform reflected in the candle-light, its scarlet collar standing out to the eye. It was all there, his 60th uniform.

Tomorrow he would wear it on his journey down to Paderborn, designated by Blücher that the Westphalian officers should assemble, and receive their men.

Above the cabinet, held in fastenings, was his regimental - and sometimes practical - curved sword and his Baker rifle. He would take great pleasure in dressing tomorrow for, he chuckled to himself, wondering whether his old friend Richard Sharpe would be re-enlisting too, this time his uniform, as well as his gun, would be spotless.

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"I need to get to Dortmund," she asked the coach driver, who clearly could not speak English and addressed Tom in what was presumably Dutch, and she said, "I'm sorry I don't speak Dutch."

Another discourse in Dutch caused Tom to feel inflamed - how ever would she get to Dortmund, if none of the drivers could understand her?

Behind her, several passengers waited impaitiently, clicks of the tongue, shuffling of the feet.

"Please," she insisted, to the man who was now talking to the couple behind her very quickly. "Dortmund. Do you go to there? Or to Hamburg?"

The coach driver looked back up to her, narrowing his eyes, then said something incomprehensible to Tom. She stepped back, pulling her coat closer around her shoulders - a bitter wind was creeping and she had better think of sonewhere to stay if she couldn't travel that evening.

All of the rest of the queueing travellers got on past her until only Tom was standing by the driver. He gave her a look which said he really did not understand her, when Tom tried once more.

"Do you travel to Dortmund?"

The man replied in haste, waving a hand dismissively in her direction. Tom took a step back, away from the carriage. It might go to Dortmund or it might not; and she looked at the carriage, full with its passengers.

"There's no coach til the morning," a voice beside her said, and Tom turned to see a young man, perhaps a few years older than Tom, black hair, and dark eyes, which were alive and active, looking at her up and down.

He was dressed in dark breeches and a coat, a tricorn hat and black boots, though his appearance seemed to be very put together from several different wardrobes. Tom smiled, gratefully.

"You speak Dutch?"

"That was Flemish," said the young man, " I also speak English, French and German." He seemed proud of this and, folding his arms, leaned back and beamed.

"Are you catching a coach too?"

"Maybe. I am in this town on, shall we say, business. I may move on, into Gernany, or maybe not."

"Looks like I'm staying the night," said Tom, his eyes resting on the inn. "I'm Tom." She held out a hand. The young man shook it.

"Kit. Kit Marlow."

"Are you a playwright?" asked Tom, amused. But Kit did not smile back, rather he looked confused. "What?"

"Oh, nothing," said Tom, taking up her bed roll, in which her clothes and all the rest of hee belongings were bundled. "I'll see if they have roomsm. Thanks for the translation."

But, instead of leaving him behind, Tom realised after a few steps that Kit Marlow was following him, much as a lost puppy might do. Tom felt a little sorry for him and, at the inn door turned and said, "are you staying?" Kit grinned.

"You paying?" 


	2. Middle Name Trouble

12.  
Tom did indeed find a room in the city of Le Havre that night and, as Kit seemed keen to stick with him he bought them both a supper of ale and a meat pie. The boy ate it as if he had never seen food before, and drank the ale like a man dying of thirst.

Tom smiled to himself as they talked. Kit, it turned out, had come from London when his parents died with what little money he had cleaning horse tack for carriage drivers, and had learned French from the Huguenot lacemakers, German and Flemish from the weavers and glassmakers in the north of London.

Between mouthfuls, Kit explained when his parents had died he tried to make a living in London and gad done better after a chance meeting with a Channel merchant. She had taken the job on his lugger across to Rotterdam working as aJack-of-all-trades. That had been four years before and had never gone back.

"I get better money for jobs here, than in London," he explained, siezing the tankard and draining what remained. "I was on my way to ..." he broke off, suddenly, then said, grinning, "and what about you, Tom Wright? What makes you so desperate to get to Dortmund or Hamburg?"

"Business," replied Tom nebulously, finishing the last of his pie. "Family.  
"Ah, well," replied Kit, scraping up the grey-coloured pastry that Tom had left on his plate and chewed it, hurriedly. "I 'ad no choice but to come, see, else I would be dead now, 'anging on a gibbet."

Tom smiled at the boy. He seemed full of life if a bit simple. If he had been hanged four years ago, he wouldn't have been still up on the gibbet. More likely on his way to decomposition in the mass criminal grave at the back of Newgate prison. But clearly, by attaching himself to Tom, Kit had a strong sense of survival.

Tom scraped back his chair as men, dock workers from Le Havre's ports began to pour into the alehouse. He should get to bed if he was to be up to get to Dortmund.

Munsterstrasse, he told himself. Munsterstrasse West for Herr Frederickson.

"Night," Tom said, but, as he'd got to the bar a hand was on her shoulder.

"This is going to be good," Kit declared. "I come with you." The delight on his young, baby-like features reminded Tom of an eager puppy, bouncing around in excitement at the first soubd of his master's voice.

"To Dortmund?"

"Yes," Kit smiled, as if any suggestion otherwise was inconceivable. Tom sighed. She just needed to get to Westfalia. What she didn't need was a dependent, no matter how endearing ge seemed to be.

Avoiding an answer, Tom turned to the inkeeper, to ask to show him to his roo.

But then a shout rang out. A man, burly and stocky, lank blonde hair falling into his dirt-ingrained face shouted again bore down on them. He shouted at Kit in a language Tom didn't know. Tom looked at the barman, then back to him. He was habning a fat finger towards Kit, clear that he had a grievance.

Kit turned to Tom, then ducked as a fist slammed into the air. Kit sprang to one side as the giant of a man lifted a thick leg and stamped it onto the rough boards of the inn's dust-strewn floor. Another followed and, to Tom's horror the man was being followed by two other men, as big as he was.

He called over his shoulder and shouted words back to them, which caused them to shout too and, as they bore down on Kit, who leapt out of the way, laughing, it became clear to Tom that the boy was in trouble with these men too.

One of them, on noticing Tom began to bear down on him, too. He held onto his bag as the man backed her up to the wall, saying something Tom couldn't understand. Instinctively, she ducked, making the man hurtle headlong into the oak wall.

"Come on!" yelled Kit, joy in his voice as he grabbed Tom's cloak. "I took their money; now they're trying to take me!"

"Where!" Tom puffed, his body shocked at the sudden need for exertion. Behind them the scuffling and breaking of furniture and doors suggested the men were following them.

"I know a place!"

Safely hidden under the rafters of a Tudor-style house three streets away from the inn, Kit and Tom watched the men hunt in the moonlight for them in vain. Kit had his hand to his mouth, suppressing laughter at the confusion on the ground below. Tom looked at him sternly, unimpressed by the frivolity of the young boy's behaviour and the trouble it had so nearly caused.

"I've never had such a night!" Kit giggled, as the men below them overturned wooden crates and baskets as they searched for them.

"I need to get to Dortmund," Tom replied, coldly. "Munsterstrasse."

"Then I'll come with you," Kit said, brightly, as if the last hour had never happened. "Tomorrow. On the coach, like you planned." Before Tom could reply to the boy's presumptuousness, Kit added, grinning, "You will probably need a translator." 


	3. To Dortmund

3

The air was getting cold. Fog crept in to Le Havre from the sea, crystallising into damp rain on the tiles. On thatched roof above the pub they had just vacated Roberta leaned back, pushibg her hand into the damp straw.

"That was a bit of fun, Tom," hissed Kit Marlowe, grinning as rain poured down his face.

"You have a different sense of fun to me," Tom hissed back, watching the gang of men that Kit had, earlier that evening, double crossed, rear around the streets on the lookout for them.

It was getting dark and the coach to Dortmund would still not be at the square until the morning. It would be suicide attempting to go back to the inn where they had just eaten to claim the room she had paid for. But they couldn't just sit there.

It might have been alright sitting up there on a dry night but there but, on a night like tonight it would be ludicrous, not to mention dangerous, to sit out in wet straw. There was nothing for it: she would have to climb down and find another place to stay.

Tom stuck her hand further back into the sodden straw. Her hand closed around it, before her fingers struck something. She curled them round it, pulling out a Brown Bess rifle.

"That's where I left it!" Kit exclaimed, laughing at Tom's expression amd held out her hand.

"Where d'you get it?" Tom asked, giving it to her.

"Won it. That man who got angry just now. It's mine, though."

"I've no doubt," Tom nodded, before slipping down off the wet thatch and into the mud below. Next to her, the Brown Bess fell, its owner joining it, splashing through the mud with it held high, lile a sort of rain damce.

This boy trouble, Tom thought to herself as she considered what to next. She still had money. Another tavern then.

Towards the river Tom began to stride. Alongside her, Kit walked too, the rifle shouldered with ease and an expectant look on her face. And, against her better judgment, Kit Marlowe came too.

Around the next corner, as they strode together to the inn, a coach flew past, its weary horses being driven in by a furious Dutchman and a whip.

Kit caught hold of Tom's collar and pulled her back. If she hadn't, Tom realised, she would have fallen under it's wheels.

"Thanks," she called to Kit over her shoulder. But the boy was scampering away from her, in the direction of the coach. Tom raced after him, not least because he seemed to have lifted the coin bag out of Tom's pocket.

"Hey!" Tom shouted, tearing off over the cobbles after Kit. He rounded a corner. The wretch, thought Tom, racing after him.

In hot pursuit, Roberta saw that Kit was ahead of her, but then he pulled up sharply, as a roar of inebriated Dutchmen came from the other direction.

Kit knew it, Roberta reckoned, just as she did: these were the men who had caught up with Kit in the inn. It took a few seconds for them to realise who they had been abruptly confronted with, looking at the rifle, and then at him.

But, by the time they had got themselves together to make after him, he'd gone, quick as a cat, slipping over a wall and then a rooftop, the rifle slung over his back.

Damn it! Roberta cursed silently, as she turned on her heel, hoping that the men were not sober enough to associate her with Kit. As such, she walked briskly down the cobbles, her mind racing. Got to get to the inn, she thought, cursing Kit again, and then herself for allowing herself to pity the boy. While she had a good deal of money from her time in America, fifty guilders was a lot of money to have stolen.

The men seemed to be picking up speed behind her. Were they following? Deftly, she slipped into a side street. The rumble of voices and hammering on the cobbles meant she had little time to hide in streets she did not know. Sje turned another corner, pressing herself against the wall of houses, crowfed together, their roofs letting in little light

Were they coming after her? Tom closed her eyes, wondering then if she had been better off staying as Roberta. Roberta could wear dresses and go about at leisure. Roberta needn't hide in back alleys.

Tom opened her eyes again, trying to gauge the sound, but it seemed distant now, like the sound of waves on a shore far away.

Pressing her feet to the cobbles, she began to walk back out of the alley, but gasped at a sound behind her. Tom ran. Out of the alley,up the side street, dodging a woman who had stepped outside her front door to shake a tablecloth? A stream of angry words followed her for she had caused the woman to drop the tablecloth. Tom turned back, looking apologetic.

That was her mistake. For the sound which had been behind her was now right in front of her.

"Come on!" Kit's impish face was urging Tom onwards and grabbing at his shoulder. It took a moment of fighting with the person in front of her for Tom to realise who it was.

"What...?" Tom tried, staring atvKit, dumstruck.

"Over the roofs," Kit revealed, sebsing Tom's question. "We can get the coach tonight: Ulf is back and he'll take us for the right price." Kit jangled the coin bag that Roberta had given up as stolen in front of her eyes.

"Well, are you coming?"

Tom raced along the cobbled main street, where she had lost him the first time determined not to do so again. Along the main street, the coach had indeed stopped and Kit approached Ulf, speaking furiously to him in, presumably, the Frisian that the boy had told Tom that was the coachman's tongue.

"I've got us transport to Dortmund," Kit smiled, brightly, after a few minutes. "Just us, straight through the night. We'll be there by breakfast." He held open the carriage door. Kit took one of the silver pieces from the bag before handing thecrest back to Tom. "Commission. As well as Damish, Norwegian, French, Swedish, Walloon, Welsh, Spanish and German, I also speak perfect Flemish.

Roberta felt herself staring at him. Who was this little spark of a boy who had, again, wormed his way into her company? In the damp smirr of the evening the black Friesland horse harnessed to the coack stamped its hoof impatiently.

"Come on, then," Kit, smiling, as if he had just done Tom the biggest favour in the world.

Perhaps he had.

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"So, tell me," Kit asked, as the evening blackened and they lay on cord-tightened wooden boards of the coach. In the darkness, now several hundred miles away from Le Havre, and oribably now in Germany, only the light from the waxing moon illuminated the interior of the wooden carriage where they would be sleeping that night. If they possibly could, Tom thought, as the bumps and ruts reverberated through the coach frame.

"Now you've come to Dortmund, what are you going to do?"

"Find who I am coming to find. He is an established lawyer." At least, I hope he is, Tom thought to the moon, which was clear and bright now they had left the city, and the sea fog which hung over it.

"What do you want a lawyer for? Surely thete are lawyers in Holland?"

Tom said nothing for a time. The silver light of the moon had robbed the coach of colour. Kit Marlowe's dainty features were better defined, his tiny nose, his deep-set, ever-interested eyes. His lips always curled at the corners, betraying mischief.

"I need to give him an answer to something." Tom clung to the side of the plank seat as rhe coach hit a rut. Ourside, the horse whinnied.

"And you couldn't have sent a letter?"

No. A letter would not do.

"Why are you here?" Tom turned her head to the boy's. He turned his, and grinned.

"I find work where I can; I can't stay in tbe same place too long - the world is just too exciting!" The boy laughed, then folded his hands together and brought them under his head.

"Or, trouble will catch up with you," Tom added. "Like tonight?" She saw him narrow his eyes, cross for a moment at being outdone.

"And you have kindly employed me as your translator, thank you, Mr. Wright."

"William Frederickson speaks perfect English," Tom retorted, turning her head away from the impudent youth. She foces her eyes upwards, to the infinite darkness of the coach's roof. His mother was English, Tom knew, so Captain Frederickson could call himself British, too.

And then, Tom realised that she was surprised that she knew very little else about him, this man who had asked her to marry him, other than his service in the Americas. Tom fiercely pushed back thoughts of that country - and her father - back inside her mind. "His father had an estate just outside the city."

"And you know where this William Frederickson is?" Kit pressed.

"I know the nanes of two streets he could be living at. Or working from."

"Well then, you will definitely need someone to translate, if you need to ask for help, to pay for lodgings...all kinds of things."

"For another silver guilder?" Tom scoffed. "I can manage."

The incendiary landed. Kit sat up and was now staring at Tom. Tom looked over at the startled boy, and smiled to herself, pitying him. He clearly had to be pushy and persistent so far in life to get on.

A stroke of sorrow passed through Tom and she smiked as Kit protested, "I won't take any money nor'n ask for any. You already gave me more than enough." The boy took the silver coin from his pocket holding it up. The moon reflected off it, illuminating it almost well enough for Kit to see his face in its shiny surface.

"Have you been to Germany before?" Tom looked back at tbe ceiling. Kit, having got over his shock of potentially being dumped, lay back again, eesti g his head on his hands again as he did so.

"Once or twice. I pick up jobs where I can. I have just finished a big one, in France."

"But they're the enemy," Tom pointed out.

"They were at peace with Britain before Boney got back to Paris this spring. So," Kit added, his tone of voice changing to one of mischief again. "What will you say to Herr Frederickson say?"

"Captain."

"Captain?" Kit looked over to her. "What, like a captain, in the army?"

"Yes," breathed Tom, remembering. "The best captain I ever served under.

"Your captain?" Kit's voice changed to one of incredulity.

"I was in the army for six years. I fought in Spain for years."

"You? You're just a scrap of a thing! You couldn't even climb a wall to follow me tonight."

"I served," Tom insisted. "I was chosen. I put my life at risk against a piece of French scum." She took Kit's hand. The boy jumped at first at the touch, but let Tom put his hand pointed to her neck.

"I saved many lives. But...a circumstance caused this. I got hanged for something I didn't do." She let go of the boy's tiny hand. For a child of the street, his skin was very soft.

"Is that why why you're going?"

"Going?" Tom echoed.

"To Dortmund. To repay the debt. To thank him. Your saviour." Tom felt shocked: it was if the boy had read his mind.

"Yes," Tom nodded, in the darkness. "To give him an answer to a question he left me with before I went...away." But Kit wasn't really listening. He was repeating the about the word "army" quietly to himself.

"How old wete you when you joined the army?" Kit asked, a few moments later.

"Thirteen."

"How old are you now?"

"Twenty. You?"

"Fifteen."

There was silence for a moment. Kit was clicking his tongue, as if thinking.

"And what if this Captain Frederickson does not like your answer?"

"Come on," Tom said, turning away from the boy, and facing towards the wall of the coach, rolling towards it as the horse began an uphill stretch. "Get sone sleep, Kit Marlowe, or you'll be too tired to translate for me tomorrow."

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	4. Boney's Back

4

It had been a hard thirty six hours heading east from Normandy. Twice, missing inns and hostelries, Major Richard Sharpe bedded down under hedgerows, tethering one of Lucille's best mares to a tree, buying food from farmhouses, ever travelling to Brussels.

Lucille had not cried, nor begged him to stay. She had not damned him to hell, nor compared his going to that of her dead husband. Richard considered whether it would have been better if she had.

No, instead, nursing her rounded stomach, Lucille DuBert kissed him tenderly and bidded him to come back to her. That had been much worse, Major Sharpe decided; he now could not push her from his mind.

So, when he strode through the chateau, knowing that his wife and her lover Rossendale were there, when he stood before Wellington's chief of staff to hear he had been made Lieutenant-Colonel and that his command was to be under that of William, Prince of Orange, he knew that, above everything else, above the respect of his men, above the success of his company that his heart would be fighting for a tiny bit of France.

With his best friend by his side. Though he had had the letter from Patrick Harper, his former sergeant, informing him of his re-enlistment, it was only when Richard saw tbe man, now horse-dealer to the aristocracy, that he believed it to be so.

"Our first is to support the Prussians at Quatre Bras," Sharpe told Harper that night. I have a few men under my command but mire are to follow.

"You'll be telling me that it's our old friends the South Essex," Harper quipped, as they bedded down in the chateau's stable, having downed copious quantities of wine.

"Aye," Sharpe replied. "You're dead right, Pat," he nodded.

The morning brought light rain and a parade of men.

"I have commanded you before, South Essex," Sharpe began, knowing that that Royal snot-rag of Prince of Orange was watching him. He patrolled round the men: not one moved an inch, not one single piece of uniform was out of place. Not one soldier did not know how to stand before a parade sergeant.

But it was not a parade sergeant who was bawling at them in a broad Sheffield accent. It was Lieutenant-Colonel Sharpe, raised in the ranks, as every one of them could tell.

"Yauw," he surveyed the men critically, wiping non-existent dust from a taller private's buttons, "Are wetter than that much falling owst 't sky!"

It went on for more than half an hour - by the end, the men, all in their late teens and twenties, for the battles at Austerlitz and Gneisnau had eaten up many - knew exactly who Lieutenant- Colonel Richard Sharpe was, and what he was about.

So, it came as a hard shock when the Prince of Orange pulled him aside when he had dismissed the sergeant, who dismissed the men. The prince had bid him walk in the gardens of the chateau.

The gentility of the setting, as war raged so near, disgusted Richard Sharpe, and he was not a man easily disgusted, or indeed, bothered by very much at all.

"You must not harangue the men so, Sharpe," Prince William chided, clearing his throat and bearing close to Sharpe. "Let them love you by leading them by example."

"Leading the South Essex by example," Richard repeated, with enough of faux respect in his tone to mask the contempt he felt for the man next in line to the Dutch throne, and cousin to the Prince Regent.

"There, you see, you have it," the Prince exclaimed, believing his message had got through immediately. "But not the South Essex?"

"Oh?" Sharpe, dismayed. "Was it not that company I just addressed who I am commanding, your grace?"

"Oh, oh but you see, Sharpe!" The Prince exclaimed, "Those are the men you will be commanding. But they are no longer the "South Essex" - no, they are the "Prince of Orange's Own." Sharpe took some steps away from the Prince: he had, Sharpe decided, a decidedly unclear awareness of personal space.

"So you must lead them, my men, and watch them fight for glory!"

"Lead them from the rear, your grace?" Sharpe asked, annoyed at the nonsense this overbred popinjay was spouting.

"Precisely, Sharpe," the prince concluded, as if that had been a lesson well taught. He leaned towards Sharpe, face close to his.

"Yes, your grace," Sharpe reluctantly offered, unhappy at the prince's proximity. "If you will excuse me - "

"More are coming, Sharpe," the prince continued, ignoring him. "We have many recruiting parties over the whole of my lands." He leered at Sharpe. This was too much, and the newly-appointed Lieutenant-Colonel felt his hand drop to his sword.

"Yes, go," the prince commanded, sensing Sharpe's disdain. "Several riflemen, some once of your own company, Sharpe, are here at your command."

Sharpe turned suddenly and saluted the prince, who returned it, superciliously, then marched off towards the chateau's outbuildings, which were holding the incoming officers.

"And get your Dutch uniform on, Sharpe," the prince called, "You're my man, now!"

"That pompous, self-important horse-sack!" Sharpe ejaculated, as he threw the door shut. He marched across the kitchen before turning and thumping on the rough, wooden table. At the other end, Pat Harper leaned back in his chair, where he had been sitting, waiting for Sharpe to return.

"And, I suspect, on the lookout for a fag, for all the standing close and heavy breathing he was doing!"

"Well, I've got something ta cheer ya up," Harper replied, his deep, Donegal voice filling the room. "Or rather - "

From the back room someone pushed open the door.

"Harris!" Sharpe stared at his former private, grinning in delight. "Matt! How are you?" He strode quickly towards his former rifleman, drawing him close and clapped him on the back, clad as it was in green.

"I thought you were going to Oxfordshire? To take a job?" Sharpe kicked a chair over to him and pulled out one for himself. Pat pulled out two more botes of ale and handed one each to Sharpe and Harris.

"Thanks," Matt said, resting a weary hand on the glass before taking a swig.

"Or enlisting in the navy?" Sharpe pressed, looking over to Pat. He, too, was staring at Matt Harris, waiting for an answer.

"Couldn't abide it," Matt said, "Though I tried it. "Too restrictive. I took up the job at Highclere. As soon as I heard we were back at war and the army was recruiting again, I gave in my notice. Walked to Portsmouth; walked from Saint Malo here.

"Why?"

"Pay's better," Matt explained. "The job was fair, but you know, the army - "

Sharpe and Harper knew. It was known by any man who had ever been in the army, successful or no. Comradeship, shared purpose, regular meals. They all knew the lure of that. That was why they'd all forsaken the quiet life just to be there. They were soldiers.

"And I met Dan on the way over," Matt added, "Said he'll be here too. Took a different road to me."

"Poaching," Pat proposed, "Knowing Hagman."

"Probably. Any others of the 95th here?" enquired Harris. " Or...60th?"

"None," Sharpe shook his head. "Though I'm commanding the South Essex. Or, as the bastard bugger of an Orange now calls them, "The Prince Of Orange's Company!" Pah!"

They ate a hearty tea cooked by the Belgian widow who had once lived in the outbuilding, who was servant at the chateau and who now, sulkily, had been commandeered to cook and clean for those billetted under her former roof. She glowered at them and grumbled something in Walloon.

"What a bundle of joy," Sharpe laughed, the heat draining from his words. "Got any more where this came from, Pat?" Sharpe shook his empty bottle.

"No, so's I haven't!" Pat protested. "I wasn't expecting to get to Brussels so quickly - that was for tonight."

"Well, I have this," Harris declared, pulling out a half-bottle of rum. "The head gardener will think the butler's had it."

He knocked it onto the table, and Sharpe dragged himself to his feet, rifling through the one rude cupboard on the wall. The woman scowled at him, then, in a barrage of foul langauge, slammed the door behind her. Sharpe looked at Harris as much as to ask for a translation.

"Let's just say we are not in her good books."

Sharpe pulled three glasses from the shelves and thrust them onto the table.

"Wine glasses for rum," Harris commented. "I suppose there are privations in war." He flicked off the cork and filled the wide-bowled flutes.

"It tells yet something," replied Harper. "Can't give us a spoon for the stew but have wine glasses in abundance. Something fluttered out of his hand.

"What's this?" Asked Sharpe, retrieving it from the straw-strewn floor.

"A letter," Harris replied.

"I can see it's a bloody letter, Matt!" Sharpe laughed. He looked at the outside. "A woman's hand," he nodded, approvingly.

"It's from Lucky," Harris said, as Sharpe scrutinised it. He raised his head, clearly shocked, paused mid-bite of meat stew. A few drops of gravy dripped onto

"I thought she was in America."

"You took her to Le Havre," Harris asked. Sharpe inclined his head.

"Tom Wright," he mused, pushing the letter back into Matt's hand then took up the wine glass of rum. "Where are you now?"

"In South Carolina, she says," Harris said, pushing the letter into his coat. "Then, she plans Germany."

"Good old Roberta Haycock," Pat added.

"Not that name around here!" Sharpe warned, then looked fown at his stew, moving his head from side to side. "If she has any sense she will be in Paderborn or Osnabrück or wherever the hell Frederickson lives."

"Dortmund," Harris specified, recalling the lengthy missive he had received from the woman who was as close to him as a sister, of wonder, of hopes, of betrayal and of regret. "But, sir, haven't you heard? The Hohenzollerns are calling up their old commanders." Harris thought for a moment. "Do you think he will answer?"

"He might."

"And Roberta?" put in Pat. "She was one fierce soldier, so she was."

"With him?" asked Harris.

"Mebbe. But what will she find in America? Many a young woman has made such a promise before."

"She has honoured such promises before," Harris replied.

"You don't think she might enlist?" Sharpe looked startled.

"I bloody hope not. She promised never to, to Wellington, an all." His coldness took Harris aback.

"Then, she's probably still in America," Matt supposed.

Sharpe drained his soup. "With whatever her business there is." He pushed his bowl away, brooding on the morrow. The epithet "Silly Billy" was spot on. And, with this war starting up again, she would do well to stay there.

88888888

Early morning light pushed its way through the coach windows as the coach from Le Havre clattered into Dortmund's market square. The horse pulled up sharply, tipping two bodies onto the floor.

Tom rubbed his face, as he pulled himself up, then held out a hand. Kit took it and grinned.

"Come on," Tom said, feeling a resolve not to be swayed from her purpose by the boy, who would certainly encourage her to do something frivolous and, probably, dangerous.

They climbed down from the coach into the warm June sunshine. Birds coursed the air high above and everywhere seemed to have a gentle calmness around it, so unlike tbe hubbub of the port she had just come from.

Defying all the odds Tom found that she was well rested, and they bounded from the coach, Kit hailing the driver in Frisian. How much the lad had paid him, only the lightness in his money bag could tell. For an uninterrupted twelve hour journey would not have been cheap.

Tom stepped out onto the smooth cobbles of the city. Surrounding a central fountain, which served to provide refreshing the water for the horses. Around it, on all four sides, were the tall townhouses that typified the architecture of northern Europe.

It had not been damaged by war, Tom noticed. This town, though on the thoroughfare from Paris to Russia, had kept its gentility. Just as William had. A sudden surge of affection rushed through Tom's body, with the ache of desire to find him.

Across beyond the street, the tall, lithe boy was busy in conversation with a man and a woman. Kit seemed to have got some information from them and the top-hatted gentleman pointed down the street they were standing on.

Kit nodded at the couple, as if in thanks, then approached another man, round-capped and carrying a basket of what looked like coal.

Tom looked down at the horse trough. Her own reflection stared back at her. She was just as tanned as she had been fighting and her hair had grown, drawn back in a ribbon, as a man would, cotton shirt, with trousers to match the jacket. Anywhere, she would pass as a gentleman, and had done since she she had stepped aboard a French frigate which had conveyed her from Boston.

She had nothing of her old life with her now: she had given away the rest to other men on the ship, those who were travelling to the Americas for a new life under Jefferson, to out food in their stomachs. They had little pride and had no compunction in accepting foreign military coats for they would keep them warm regardless which country had issued them.

Nothing, with the exception of her 60th uniform. In her bundle of greatcoat - concealing her pistol and short dagger - purchased in New York before she headed down to South Carolina, she had kept it, and had worn it when...

...when she had found her father. Perhaps it had been the reduction in her physical activity that had caused her to put on weight: where as it had been too big on her eighten months ago in Portugal but now, she found, it seemed to fit snugly around the chest and hips.

Kit was now examining the shops and houses in this, the centre of Dortmund, his black curls shining in the morning sun. This stirred a memory in Tom's mind and an image of the lovely Madame DuBert flashed across her mind, whose hair shone like that too, and whose body curved as a woman's should.

William had asked her to marry him. Did he still think of her? She was away with Major Sharpe. Clearly they were happy even though they weren't married.

She had spurned him and now, without a word in the meantime, Roberta had been a long time coming, and, now, coming in the form of Tom Wright, gentleman, unwomanly in shape and action, with not even a letter written to him. It was only now, as she stood on his city, that she could see the folly of this.

Just the heavy cloud of guilt of her actions in South Carolina began to press on her shoulders, it was blown away by the zephyr that was Kit Marlowe. He bounded over to Tom, face alight.

"I spoke to a man over there. On the main street, Hochstrasse. He says, along with a Herr Schneider, a Herr Frederickson has a law practise."

Tom paused as joy surged in her chest, all other doubt receding. This boy, younger than she but looking older, short black curls bobbing in the sunlight - on the way to the gallows, presumably for theft if the trouble in Le Havre was anything to go by, was giving him - Tom - the perfect answer she was all too ready to hear. Was there a deception here?

Yet, another part of Tom's mind thought, Kit had returned the returned the silver to her. Further, Tom's offer to part ways had brought around a kind of desperation in the boy. There was more to Kit Marlowe than first appeared.

"We'll go then?" Kit asked, excited, like a dog who had just brought a bone in for his master's approval.

"Yes," Tom replied, decisively as Kit shouldered his Brown Bess. To Hochstrasse and to Captain Frederickson.

Above the line ground floor of the street to which Kit had been directed the sign read, "Hochstrasse an Munsterstrasse."

They walked in silence along it, looking at the Gothic-lettered signs painted onto wood as they went by: "Schmidt: Drucker"; "Müller: Herrenbekleidung".

Shops were interspersed with tall town houses. Two women stepped onto the cobbles dressed in what looked like the Directoire-style of clothing popular in Paris at the turn of the century, hair curled and beribboned.

And then, further along came: "Rechtsanwalt: Schneider und Frederickson".

"Lawyer," Kit said, reading the sign as he pulled on Tom's arm. But Tom did not need to be encouraged to stop, for it was the latter of the two names that had caught Tom's eye. She pushed down on the latch of the door and stepped inside.

Kit waited outside as Tom shut the door. Her mind was racing as fast as her heart. She had found him, at last. Lying in fields with a militia force in Jamestown, up to her shoulders in freezing river water; walking with holes in her boots to the estate which her father had purchased with money from bribes from the Yanks to betray his country: in each terrible situation after another, her mind would be quieted by dreaming of this moment.

Frederickson had asked her to marry him, and Tom had said Roberta would give him her answer after she had done what she needed to do in the Americas. She had gone there, she had been there and done the unthinkable. And now she was here, with her answer.

"Guten Morgen," a young man said, a round-faced, blonde youth of about sixteen as she approached the desk set in the centre of the office. "Wie kann ich Sie hilfen?"

Tom stared. He knew no German. Yet, she could not bear to bring in the boy who had attached himself to her to translate.

"Excuse me," Tom began, as a flash of recognition of a different language passed over the young man's face.

"Allow me to introduce myself," the young man said, in clipped English. "I am Thaddeus Bechtold, I am junior parter to Alfred Schneider. How may I be of assistance, sir?"

For once, Tom's forthrightness failed her. She stuttered, and looked back to the door.

"I, er, am looking for a Captain...Herr Frederickson," she managed. "I have called about a matter which...I need to..." Tom faltered, then fell silent.

"May I speak to Herr Frederickson?" Young Herr Bechtold shook his head.

"I am afraid he is from the office today," the boy said. "Would you like me to take a message?"

Tom said nothing for a good few mi utes. Where this youth was standing she always imagined, in some iteration, her former captain standing, smiling, calling her "leiblein" again.

When she found her tongue to speak, Tom realised that Berchtold was staring at her neck.

She could never disguise the dark line where, in a rope noose, it had taken her bodyweight. Self-consciously, Tom placed her fingers to the marks.

"Do you know when Herr Frederickson will return? Or, do you have...his home address?"

Thaddeus Bechtold was still looking at her neck, and drew his eyes unwillingly to hers.

But if he had been going to answer, the chance was lost, for at that moment a woman pushed open the door behind Tom. She turned, and looked into the face of a middle-aged woman, pale eyes, face trimmed with spiral curls under a large bonnet.

"Frau Schafernacker," Mr. Bechtold acknowledged, then looked back to Tom. "Is that all, sir?"

But before Tom could answer Mrs Schafernacker burst into a giggle,which turned into a sob, stepping past Tom and taking Bechtold's hands.

She began talking and, it was as if a little sprite had come to rest on Tom's shoulder for the words arriving into ger ear were English.

"I gave come to the lawyer, and I wish to speak to Herr Schneider or Herr Frederickson."

Tom turned, and looked directly into the face of Kit Marlowe.

"Neither Mr. Schneider or Mr. Frederickson are here," Kit continued, eyes merry at Tom's astonishment. But, before he could continue, the boy Thaddeus leaned across the teak desk and intobed, "Firearms are not permitted."

Kit, shoudering his rifle, reluctantly withdrew and stood outside the office window, nodding at Tom.

Tom nodded back, as much as to say, "Acceptable."

"Ich finde meinen nächsten Mann heiraus, ja?"

"Veilleicht," Thaddeus Bechtold replied, clearly out of his depth. Then, in English added, "Another for Herr Frederickson." He write some notes into a large ledger that lay open on the table, before Mrs Schafernacker waved a goodbye to the young man.

"Und, deine Name?" Bechtold asked, then, switched to English. "Your name, sir?" He held his quill pen, poised.

"No, no," Tom rebuked. "It does not matter. But, perhaps, Herr Frederickson has a message for me?"

"I can seek," the young man said. "Please, tell me your name?" He looked around the desk for so ething, then opened one of the desk's drawers.

"Thomas. Thomas Wright." She stopped herself from leaning forward.

"No," Bechtold said, as he leafed through the contents of the drawer. Tom lolmed away. Had she not, she may have spied one letter, piled onto the table with the rest, made out in Frederickson's crisp, neat script which read, "Roberta Haycock." But she did not, and could not walk from that solicitor's office with joy in her heart.

Tom turned back when she heard Bechtold say, "Unfortunately, no. I will make a note you called, though?" he insisted.

He had moved on, of course, Tom told herself, her stomach growing hollow. The hatred for her father - clearly he could not separate that from any feelings he had had for her.

What a fool she was. Tom had thought that their night together meant more than it had, then.

"Do you know where he is? Will hwle be here tomorrow?" she asked, desperately. The boy, though clearly overstepping his role, saw the look on Tom's face.

"I do not believe Herr Frederickson will be at the office for some considerable time?"

"Why?" Bechtold beckoned her over.

"He has been called. The Royal House of Hohenzollerns have called in all their officers."

"Called in their officers? But, why? We are no longer at war."

"Haven't you heard?" The boy smiled, dimples forming in his cheeks. But there was no humour, no mirth.

"Our army has reformed to combat tbe enemy. Under Field Marshal Blücher. Yours too. In Brussels."

Tom stood still for a few minutes, taking this all in.

"But why?" Tom asked. "Bonaparte was defeated. He was exiled to Elba."

"He was," Bechtold corrected. "And he was liberated, spirited from that island by men who were loyal to him. Bonaparte is back," the boy concluded, solemnly, "and he means to continue what he began."  



End file.
